O'Connor stood looking out the window. His gaze wandered over the well-known roofs of the buildings along William Street, and a momentary pang shot through him to think that under those roofs to-morrow there would be no place for him, and that his venture was all to begin again. He no longer felt any sense of grievance, any animosity against Murch. He was merely wondering vaguely at Fate, and at this latest whim of hers. So deep was he in his reverie that he scarcely noticed the entrance of the expected callers until he heard a voice that recalled him to actualities. "Mr. Murch, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Smith," Belknap was saying; and O'Connor turned sharply back from the window. To Mr. Belknap's courteous greeting he gave little heed, but like a charmed canary before a cobra his look rested on the second man of the pair. This was a young man with level, gray eyes, who nodded slightly and cheerfully said:-- "How do you do, Mr. O'Connor." No word said O'Connor; his eyes neither lowered nor turned aside their fascinated gaze. Each of the four men stood still, waiting for the little drama to end: a long minute. "Here are the papers, Mr. Murch," said the intermediary, at last, turning to the financier. "All right; let me look over them," said the other. Five minutes later the Salamander had ceased to exist. CHAPTER XXV The March winds blustered over Boston, and the cold salt smell of the ocean was borne tempestuously in upon the shivering city. Chill and keen out of the northeast came the air that hinted not at all of spring, but urgently of winter. The people in the streets walked briskly, with no laggard steps; they were accustomed to this sort of untimely treatment from the New England climate, and they had no intention of being betrayed thereby into pondering over southern lands or sunny vineclad hillsides where summer always lingered. Boston might not be climatically Utopian, but there was at all events something virile, something manly and admirable about a sort of weather for which no other good word could be used. Between the tall buildings in Kilby Street, where now for three weeks the current of the insurance world had been flowing with quickened, almost feverish pulse, the activity on this blustering day in middle March was undiminished. Of the hastily arranged adjustment offices which the magnitude of the conflagration had made necessary, nearly all had been given up, and the comparatively few uncompleted adjustments of losses were now being handled through the regular offices.